Aqua Security hits unicorn valuation after completing $135 million series E

Tel Aviv-based cloud security company Aqua Security Software Ltd. announced on Wednesday that it has completed a $135 million series E round, at a valuation topping $1 billion. The round was led by ION Crossover Partners with participation by some of its previous backers, including TLV Partners, Insight Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners, M12 Ventures, Greenspring Associates, and Acrew Capital. The new capital brings the company’s total equity funding to $265 million.

The company noted that as part of the current round, 100 of the company’s veteran employees were allowed to actualize part of their stock options. Aqua Security was founded bur Amir Jerbi and Dror Davidoff five years ago to provide cloud native security solutions. “Five years ago the most promising development in our sector was a virtual container technology called Docker,” Davidoff, Aqua Security’s co-founder and CEO told Calcalist. “Since then, as a result of rapid evolution, more and more cloud solutions have sprung up and the world has strategically shifted to a hybrid mode. We used to think of hybrid as an intermediate stage. Today organizations operate simultaneously on multiple private and public clouds using various technologies, which raises an urgent need for new security solutions. As a response, we have quickly extended our range of solutions and are capable of providing a far wider platform that offers a comprehensive solution. There are only two other companies in the world that are able to do that and Check Point is also headed in that direction, but is doing it by carrying out numerous acquisitions.”

Aqua Security’s previous funding round was completed in May 2020, but Davidoff said it was spurred to carry out another round so soon afterwards due to Covid-19 accelerating widespread transition to the cloud. “Recall that last April, the world was at a standstill because of the great uncertainty that was prevalent. It took everyone a little time to reorganize, but what’s taking place in the cloud environment is changing the rules of the game. Organizations no longer deliberate whether they should transition to the cloud, only when and how soon they can do it. Simultaneously, advanced cloud-native application development technologies are being adopted. This world is experiencing a dramatic shift both in terms of the directions its heading in and in terms of new technologies, resulting in a new line of security products,” Davidoff added.

“We are more than doubling our growth on an annual basis. One hundred of the Fortune 500 companies are included in our list of clients and we have reached the scale-up stage. It has also become clear that our field of operation is a standalone category within the data security sector. We are capable of becoming a multi-billion dollar company. We have received many acquisition offers along the way, but have declined them all because we are long-distance runners,” said Davidoff.

Are you allocating any of the new capital to acquisitions?

“Certainly, we completed our first one at the end of 2019 and feel that we are now ready for more, but they will be micro-acquisitions of technology companies who complement our solution or of teams that can augment our capabilities. Our platform can easily integrate additional products.”